Implant offers alternative to high blood pressure drugs

A team working at Frenchay Hospital in Bristol has shown that the device, similar to a cardiac pacemaker, can provide a surgical alternative to blood-pressure drugs.

The team successfully used the deep-brain-stimulation technique, usually applied for mental illnesses and neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s, on a 55-year-old man when drugs were unable to control his high blood pressure following a stroke.

The team, led by Dr Nikunj Patel from Frenchay’s Department of Neurosurgery and senior clinical lecturer at the university, used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to precisely position the device in the brain.

‘It’s a technique that we’ve developed in Bristol that is unique in the world,’ Patel told The Engineer. ‘Using this method we’re able to ensure quite significant rates of accuracy – in 97 per cent of cases within a millimetre.’

The procedure uses plastic guide tubes made by Renishaw to implant an electrode device in the brain about 9cm from the skull, avoiding the use of metal that could interfere with the MRI scan.